US foreign policy ghoul happy with Trump’s new Israel team (Yes, I’m talking about Elliot Abrams)

The Menachem Begin Heritage Center has just published this podcast featuring an interview with Elliot Abrams, a member in good standing of the foreign policy establishment and one of the most ghoulish figures in the history of American foreign policy. (1)

Why does he enjoy that distinction? Charlie Pierce explains in his signature style how Abrams earned that title during the Reagan Administration:

Abrams fronted for murderous regimes up and down Central America. At the time, our old friend, Roberto D'Aubuisson, the [El Salvador] death squad jefe, was being feted as a celebrity by the American conservative movement. (Later, he would be invited to a private dinner with the D.C. conservative power elite not long after he reportedly tried to kill a U.S. ambassador with a car bomb. One of the sponsors of the dinner was...wait for it...the National Pro-Life PAC.) Abrams and D'Aubuisson were a match made several degrees south of heaven.

From there, Abrams kept popping up every time there was a Republican administration in need of a proven public liar willing to support the death squads du jour. He fronted for Efrain Rios Montt, the genocidal leader of Guatemala. ...

At roughly the same time, Abrams got in up to his eyeballs in the Central American half of the Iran Contra scandal. This required his special skills. In 1986, he appeared before a congressional inquiry and, of course, he dealt in his own special kind of non-fact. He did it so well that Lawrence Walsh, the independent counsel investigating this fiasco, was prepared to indict him for several felonies. Abrams copped a plea and the charges were reduced to misdemeanors. Then, in December of 1992, in an obvious attempt to cover his own...er..involvement, President George H. W. Bush pardoned everyone except Shoeless Joe Jackson on his way out of town. This included Elliot Abrams, who, ever since, has been gum on the shoe of American foreign policy. [my emphasis] (2)

Under President Joe Biden, Abrams served as the State Department Special Representative for Iran and Venezuela.

This guy, the death squad enabler in some of the most infamous US meddling in Latin America – and that’s saying a lot – thinks Donald Trump’s announced Israel policy team is awesome. In this interview, he refers at least twice to the occupied West Bank as “Judea and Samaria,” the term the Zionist settler movement uses to refer to the area. That is part of the Eretz Israel, Greater Israel aka, from the river to the sea - which Netanyahu’s governing coalition has endorsed as its goal.

As a Haaretz editorial described it in 2023:

Israel has been carrying out de facto annexation in the West Bank for many years, with Israeli civilian authorities dictating the policy of the Civil Administration. All previous Israeli governments, however, have been cautious about interfering with the formal governing structure in the occupied West Bank and have been careful to keep the occupation as a military government.

The concentration of powers in an occupying military force, temporarily until an agreed solution is reached on the status of the occupied territory, is a principle of international law – an expression of the important prohibition against obtaining sovereignty that was introduced in the wake of World War II. The prohibition against annexing occupied territory is one of the foundations of the new world order that was built on the ruins of the world wars, and its goal is to eliminate one of the incentives for going to war. [my emphasis] (3)

In an article earlier this year, Abrams sneered at the idea of a “two-state solution.” This is now clearly an unrealistic option. But it still is the official negotiating position of the US and other Western countries, as Abrams knows very well. In fact, the practical choice is between an apartheid state “from the river to the sea” with Jewish citizens and disenfranchised Palestinians., or a one-state solution in which the current Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza become a secular and democratic state. This is a version of what has really always been the Israeli position: no Palestinian state and no place for the Palestinians in the occupied territories. Ever. (4)

How helpful Abrams has been as a Biden official is illustrated by this fact:

Just weeks before the [October 7, 2023] attack [on Israel by Hamas from Gaza], Elliott Abrams, a longtime U.S. operative who is now a senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, exemplified this kind of intelligence failure when he advised a congressional committee that Hamas was focusing its operations in the West Bank, not Gaza.

Hamas “wants to restrain attacks from Gaza,” Abrams told Congress. This is because “it wants to avoid Israeli strikes on Gaza, where it is governing. It wants a level of calm there. It wants the border crossings open.”

Despite these analytical errors, U.S. officials have maintained accurate intelligence on Gaza. Since the May 2021 war, the highest-level U.S. officials have understood that the cycle of violence would likely recur unless conditions in Gaza improved. (5)

Heckuva job, Elliott, heckuva job!

Notes:

(1) What Trump’s return will mean for Israel - Elliott Abrams. Begin Center YouTube channel 12/04/2024. <https://youtu.be/TKxYGxdZrRw?si=eUmz6VhHNXSHsw3W> (Accessed: 2024-07-12).

(2) Pierce, Charles (2023): Congratulations to Elliott Abrams, Hype Man for Murderous Regimes Past, On His New Job. Esquire 07/05/2023. <https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a44444388/elliott-abrams-biden-appointment/> (Accessed: 2024-07-12).

(3) Israel's Cabinet Just Advanced Full-fledged Apartheid in the West Bank. Haaretz 02/26/2023. <https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/editorial/2023-02-26/ty-article/.premium/israels-cabinet-just-advanced-full-fledged-apartheid-in-the-west-bank/00000186-8a7e-d525-a9ef-9efe63060000> (Accessed: 2024-07-12). Note: This was seven months before the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023.

(4) Abrams, Elliott (2024): The Two-State Delusion. Tablet 02/01/2024. <https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/israel-middle-east/articles/two-state-delusion> (Accessed: 2024-07-12).

(5) Hunt, Edward (2023): The Real U.S. Intelligence Failure in Gaza. Foreign Policy in Focus 10/12/2023. <https://fpif.org/the-real-u-s-intelligence-failure-in-gaza/> (Accessed: 2024-07-12).

Planned staged confrontation on the Colombia-Venezuela border today

The PBS Newshour actually did a report on Maduro supporters, Why Venezuela's Chavistas are fiercely loyal to Maduro, despite economic crisis 02/22/2019:

The American coup attempt in Venezuela is staging a confrontation today (Saturda) that the leaders apparently hope will provoke (or provide a figleaf excuse for) an American military intervention against the real existing government of Nicolás Maduro.

Alex Daugherty and Franco Ordoñez report (Keeping up momentum in Venezuela hinges on getting humanitarian aid in on Saturday Miami Herald 01/22/2019):

... none of Venezuela’s top military leaders have publicly backed [self-proclaimed "president" Juan] Guaidó’s interim government. Russia and China continue to recognize Maduro. India is buying more Venezuelan oil. Both supporters and critics of the decision to recognize Guaidó are worried about losing momentum for elections if Saturday comes and goes without a change in the status quo, as the full effect of U.S. oil sanctions on Maduro’s inner circle will take months, not weeks. ...

Diplomats from the region are growing concerned that momentum against Maduro is slowing.

“The thought was that when the United States recognized Guaidó that things would fall apart for Maduro,” said one South American diplomat who spoke on condition of anonymity because the diplomat was not authorized to publicly discuss U.S. policy. “But that hasn’t happened yet.”

The thinking in the region was that the international pressure campaign would spur top leaders of the military to turn against Maduro and back Guaidó. But that hasn’t happened yet.

After the U.S. imposed financial sanctions on PDVSA, the Venezuelan oil company controlled by the government, “we were thinking this was a turning point,” said the diplomat. “But that was weeks ago.” [my emphasis]

This coup is clearly not unfolding as its backers hoped.

There was some violence on the Brazilian border Friday, with two people reportedly killed by Venezuelan security forces. Here's professional ghoul Elliott Abrams pretending like he actually cares about how many people get killed: "Donald Trump’s Venezuela envoy Elliott Abrams, who was also in Colombia, also blasted Maduro for the clashes along the Brazilian border. Abrams said the two Venezuelans 'were killed trying to get food and medicine for their families. It’s a crime and a disgrace.'" (Jim Wyss, Guaidó makes surprise visit to Colombia as Venezuelans demand aid and Maduro digs in Miami Herald 02/22/2019)

Anne Gearan and Carol Morello give attention to some considerations that should be obvious but don't seem to be aired in most of the news reports I've seen (Trump, in risky gambit, ratchets up pressure on Venezuela as tensions flare at the border Washington Post 02/22/2019):

Elliott Abrams and other State Department officials accompanied an airlift of U.S. humanitarian aid to the Colombian border in a provocative partnership with Maduro’s political rival as tensions rise over the internal power struggle in Venezuela. The Trump administration has not said whether it will attempt to deliver the aid by force Saturday, the day when opposition leader Juan Guaidó, who is supported by the Trump administration, has said the relief supplies will cross into Venezuela.

Trump has repeatedly said that military action is an option, including in remarks Monday to Venezuelan exiles in Miami, setting up a paradox for a president who has argued that the United States wastes money and lives when playing global policeman. ...

Having leaned so heavily into the conflict, Trump risks looking weak or ineffective at home and abroad if the Maduro regime survives in the face of U.S. opposition.

The Trump administration emboldened Guaidó to declare himself Venezuela’s rightful leader last month and has helped rally international diplomatic support behind him. The White House has not said what it will do if Guaidó’s movement collapses in chaos or a bloodbath. [my emphasis]

David Smilde writes in the WOLA blog about the humanitarian aid gambit by the coup leaders (Venezuela Weekly: Battle of the Bands on the Border 2/19/2019):

AN [National Assembly] Deputy Miguel Pizarro who is coordinating the operation has said that it is the Maduro government that is politicizing the aid. The opposition would be quite happy if they could bring it in without confrontation. Yet, aid organizations such as Caritas have made clear that they would only participate in distribution of the aid if it fulfills international standards. The United Nations has also warned about politicization of humanitarian aid. Any efforts or operations on the border that appear like they are intentionally putting people in harm’s way, could generate a backlash.

• It is not completely true that Maduro has blocked all aid. He recently accepted $9 million in health and nutritional aid from the United Nations. There have also been a number of groups getting aid into the country under the radar.

Smilde also makes some points about Trump's major Venezuelan speech this week that need to be kept in mind in relation to the American-directed Venezula regime change policy:

The speech made clear that while in Afghanistan and Syria, Trump’s “America first” vision is holding sway, in Latin America policy it is his neoconservative advisors that are in charge. He represented the push for a transition in Venezuela as just the first step in an effort to free Cuba and Nicaragua as well. When that happens, he said, “this will become the first free hemisphere in all of human history.”

He also mentioned socialism from beginning to end in the speech, repeatedly tying the situation in Venezuela to those who want to install socialism in the United States, implicitly referring to some left democrats who have increasingly adopted the term for their politics.

The centrality that Venezuela has taken in his discourse, and his insertion of Venezuela into broader policy goals for the region, suggest it is unlikely Trump will put Venezuela on the back burner. [my emphasis]

All of which adds up to this: The regime change operation of the Trump-Pence Administration in Venezuela is a high-risk operation that's stalled coming out of the gate. It could lead to a serious war if the US intervenes, which would have major consequences for regional peace, refugee inflows into Brazil and Colombia, and deadly consequences for the people of Venezuela. A foreign policy of going in and breaking things is not a good foreign policy. And invading another country just because you can is literally a crime under international law.

A flashpoint coming in the Venezuela coup attempt?

My main focus of attention on Venezuela is whether the grim triad of Mike Pence, John Bolton, and the thoroughly creepy Elliott Abrams are going to get their regime change war or not.

Before getting into the more current news, I want to call attention to this long read from the longtime left journal Monthly Review: Ana Felicien, Christina Schiavoni and Liccia Romero, The Politics of Food in Venezuela 6/01/2018. It's from the middle of 2018, so it doesn't directly address the current coup attempt. But it has some historical background, including a description of how the development of the oil industry badly disrupted Venezuelan agriculture as early as the 1920s. It's a good antidote the comic-book version of conflict in Venezuela that the US mainstream media is giving us today. (The German and Austrian press reporting on it that I've seen has also often been painfully superficial.)

But, even as lazy as some of the mainstream press articles on the Venezuelan crisis may be, they are worth a close reading, especially the more important parts that are often buried deep in the articles. Ernesto Londoño, for instance, reported for the New York Times almost a week ago in U.S. Military Starts Flying Aid for Venezuela to Colombia 02/16/2019 (Spanish version here):

... the country’s large corps of generals and other high-ranking officers has so far refused to back a plan to oust Mr. Maduro and help opposition leaders convene a new election. ...

Once it became clear to opposition leaders that the military was siding with Mr. Maduro after Mr. Guaidó proclaimed himself the country’s rightful leader on Jan. 23, the opposition mounted a plan to get tens of millions of dollars worth of food and medicine into the country. [my emphasis]

Things have clearly not gone the way the coup planners in Washington and elsewhere expected. The ongoing stunt around humanitarian aid is clearly understood by Washington and pseudo-president Juan Guaidó as a political manuever, even a tripwire for outside military intervention.

But, as Londoño reports:

Rebecca Chavez, who served as the deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Western Hemisphere during the Obama administration, said it was “very likely” that the American military would be drawn into the crisis in Venezuela as the power struggle between Mr. Maduro and Mr. Guaidó escalates.

But, she argued, “any unilateral military intervention in Venezuela would be a huge mistake.” If the American military does end up delivering aid, or takes part in a peacekeeping mission, Ms. Chavez said, it should be done as part of a coalition.

The recent election of conservative leaders in key Latin American nations, including Brazil, Colombia and Chile, makes that prospect more plausible than in past years. But so far, officials in Colombia and Brazil have signaled deep reservations about military missions in Venezuela. [my emphasis]

We‘re now into the fifth week of what may be the strangest coup attempt Latin America has ever seen. Brazil's fascist-minded President Jair Bolsonaro may be part of the (metaphorical) Nationalist International. But this shows a big problem with expecting “internationalism“ from rightwing nationalists.

Even if they are cynical and corrupt allies of the local oligarchies, they still have to think about their own national interests and their political base has to see them doing nationalist posturing. There are several obvious reasons an even half-sane Brazilian or Colombian government would be worried about this regime change operation. One is that it‘s run by Elliott Abrams. Bolsonaro may admire Abrams‘ passion for murderous savagery in politics. But the fact the Abrams is in charge guarantees that the result will be an awful mess.

Another is that up to three million refugees from Venezuela are already in Brazil and Colombia. Bolsonaro would be glad to demagogue against the refugees. But unlike Trump in the US or Viktor Orbán in Hungary, Brazil and Colombia already have real refugee problems, and an American invasion or civil war in Venezuela will magnify them. Also, the Trump-Pence Administration have been remarkably crass about the fact that Washington is running it. Even pro-American rightwing Latin American government have to worry about the precedent.

And why would Brazil or Colombia choose to kick off the invasion? They know that Trump will be quick to blame them if something goes wrong. And they would be credibly attacked politically for acting as US mercenaries.

Anthony Faiola and Rachelle Krygier reported yesterday (Venezuela braces for possible conflict ahead of opposition’s push to deliver humanitarian aid Washington Post 02/21/2019):

Maduro on Thursday ordered the closure of the border with Brazil and weighed sealing the border with Colombia, not far from this western metropolis, as his government scrambled to respond to the planned Saturday operation. Venezuela’s National Institute of Civil Aviation issued an order grounding private jet traffic nationwide. Commercial flights were still operating, though Air France said it would cancel flights to Caracas through Monday, given the heightened tensions.

In an apparent bid to counter international criticism of turning away the aid — provided by the United States and other countries advocating for Maduro’s ouster — Maduro’s vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, said the government on Thursday had sent the United Nations a list of medicines the country needed for “humanitarian assistance.” Maduro also announced that 7.5 tons of medical supplies had arrived Thursday from Russia and the Pan American Health Organization.

Maduro’s directives came as the U.S.-backed effort to topple his government is entering a critical and potentially more dangerous phase. [my emphasis]

And this is a pretty straightforward attempt by the Coup Triad (Pence, Bolton, Abrams) and Juan Guaidó to provoke a direct military conflict. And if they actually do send unarmed civilians to face off with the Venezuelan army, the ethics of that seem pretty questionable, to put it mildly. How many people will sign up to be human sacrifices to kick off Elliott Abrams' war with Venezuela?

Aljazeera reports on the border closure to Brazil, Maduro shuts Venezuela's border with Brazil amid aid standoff 02/22/2019:

And it really is a question worth asking. Why is the Maduro government, which Trump described in his speech this past week as a "dicatatorship" and a "socialist tyranny", allowing internal opponents to operate out in the open like this inside Venezuela?

Guaidó and his team in a caravan of 10 vans were headed Thursday toward San Cristobal, and ultimately to the Colombia border. Four buses traveling ahead of him with opposition lawmakers, journalists and volunteers were stopped in the state of Carabobo by national guardsmen throwing tear gas, said Roberto Campos, an opposition lawmaker who was on one of the buses.

Some of the lawmakers struggled with the guardsmen, who, Campos said, sought to take their IDs. A Guaidó spokesman confirmed that his vehicle was still making its way west.

The national guard used tear gas and tried to take their IDs, but didn't try to arrest them? A group headed to the border with the expressed purpose of staging a confrontation to justify foreign intervention?

I'm not suggesting that the Maduro government is angelic. Amnesty International says that it's about to put out a report on official abuses they have documented, Venezuela: Hunger, punishment and fear, the formula for repression used by authorities under Nicolás Maduro 02/20/2019. The article linked does not mention the government deliberately using hunger as a political weapon, despite the headline. It does mention that in some poor areas, "residents depend to a large extent on the currently limited state programs to distribute staple foods." The Monthly Review article linked at the top of this post contains a more detailed explanation of those programs and their background against the impact of the oil business on Venezuelan agriculture.

But back to the question why the government is letting the coup participants operate so openly, I don't have any specialized knowledge of the situation there. But it's hard for me to imagine that the government isn't calculating that the coup faction is discrediting itself with the Venezuelan public by their actions, which look from from afar like bumbling and desperate moves. (Obviously, whether the government is right in their estimate.) To be fair, Trump did call Maduro's government a "failed dictatorship." It does seem like a failure at the dictatorship game to allow an internationally back coup that is threatening to invite foreign invastion to run around and operate in public.

Trump and the Elliott Abrams regime change agenda in Latin America

This is the PBS Newshour video of Trump's speech on Venezuela yesterday.Trump's speech starts just after 15:30. President Trump delivers remarks on Venezuela 02/19/2019:

Here is the Miami Herald's report from David Smiley and Martin Vassolo, Trump proclaims ‘twilight’ of socialism in the Americas during Miami speech on Venezuela 02/18/2019.

The speech was bizarre, even though he was obviously reading most of it from a prepared text on the teleprompter.

Trump in this speech sounded like a John Birch Society type circa 1959. Trump all but declared war on Venezuela, and seems to think he's himself the president of Venezuela as well as commander-in-chief of the armed forces there. Lots of Mussolini vibe in this one. He's obviously working the stop-socialism-in-America theme in close connection with the anti-Veneuela agitation.

But on Venezuela, with the regime change operation looking pretty tepid at the moment, what will the US do with Maduro calling his bluff and the military doesn't join the coup?

And with Trump playing a professional wrestler's version of Teddy Roosevelt on Venezuela, it really wouldn't too much to expect that the corporate press take a serious look at what the actual plans of the Juan Guaidó "government" are to solve the problems of the Venezuelan petrostate. Frances Coppola wrote a column four years ago called The Impending Collapse Of Venezuela Forbes 01/13/2015:

The balance of payments problem is bad enough. The falling oil price is causing a widening foreign exchange gap. Venezuela needs an oil price of $100 per barrel to balance its external accounts, but oil is falling rapidly towards $40 per barrel and so far, Venezuela has failed to persuade other oil producers to reduce production in order to support the price. Venezuela’s foreign exchange outflows now substantially exceed its inflows, not least because it is supporting a complex and unhelpful exchange rate system: its US$ reserves are down to $22bn and falling fast.

Venezuela is actually an extreme case of the petrostate dilemma, meaning among other things that it is particularly vulnerable to swings in the price of oil. That wouldn't change if Maduro decided to throw in the towel tomorrow and let puppet "president" Juan Guaidó take over. The accusations of corruption around the national oil company PDvSA are particularly credible because corruption is a chronic problem of petrostates. See Putin's Russia, for instance.

Diversifying the petrostate economy to have less dependence on petroleum is another chronic dilemma. Agriculture has proven to be a particular challenge in Venezuela, which has a large amount of high-quality fertile land. But agriculture is stagnant literally because of a how're-you-gonna-keep-them-on-the-farm-after-they've-seen-Caracas problem. The oil business draws people into the cities, where they can get better wages and other benefits of urban life. Hugo Chavez' government made an effort to revitalize agriculture but it didn't have much success. Even in years of high oil prices, Venezuela has had a high level of violence, i.e., ordinary criminal violence. That always has multiple causes. But the ongoing disruption of rural communities by the migration to the cities is surley a contributing factor.

How the Guaidó government - when and if it actually become a real government - intends to remedy these problems is a question that American reporters should be asking. Prior to last month, polls showed that a large percentage of Venezuelans didn't know who Guaidó was, Is he going to be the actual president if the coup succeeds? Or will he be pushed aside for some other authoritarian goon or scamster? Remember this guy? Ahmad Chalabi, Iraqi Politician Who Pushed for U.S. Invasion, Dies at 71 by Sewell Chan New York Times 11/03/2015

I'll give Nadja Drost credit for this PBS Newshour interview with self-proclaimed "president" Guaidó, Of pushing out Maduro, Guaido says 'Venezuela already decided for change' 02/18/2019, transcript here:

She actually does challenge him with some important questions. Which he evaded by decided the stock regime change propaganda pitch.

She asks him, "You have said that all options are on the table. And I'm wondering, where are you going to draw the line in the sand if Maduro does not step down from power? Would you think about the possibility of an outside military intervention?"

Guaidó responds:

We have been clear in saying that all cards are on the table, the necessary pressure to achieve an end to the usurping [meaning Maduro's government], the transitional government [Guaidó himself] and the free elections, with the best social cost as possible, so that it generates governance and stability to the country, and it lets us have elections as soon as possible.

Our constitution is very clear. Venezuelans are the ones to authorize any use of violence. It is Venezuelans who will make the decision. Obviously, no one wants to get to that point. But, again, it is Maduro's choice to refuse something as elemental as humanitarian aid, a free election.

These are the clear demands for the Venezuelans. [my emphasis]

Guaidó is making clear that if the real existing Venezuelan government blocks delivery of humanitarian aid by coup supporters, that would justify a violent action to remove Maduro's government, even violent action backed by a foreign military. That much is a clear statement from the nominal coup leader.

Drost keeps pressing him on what that means, and Guaidó keeps responding with stock propaganda lines. There may be ways to interpret the following interchange as something other than Elliott Abrams' boy Guaidó saying that Maduro has to surrender first and then they will negotiate but not before. But I can't think of what those other readings might be:

Nadja Drost:

Right now, there's many options on the table for how Maduro might possibly leave office.

Are you willing — in an effort to reduce the possibility of violent confrontation, is the opposition willing to participate in a model of co-governance for a temporary transition period with Maduro?

Juan Guaido:

The only one suggesting a violent confrontation is Maduro, with his military aggressions, when he threatens us with snipers.

We're going to continue the blueprint we followed for years in a way that's nonviolent, in a way that is peaceful. If they want to slaughter the people, they have the weapons. And they have already done it on some occasions.

So, having some sort of cooperation with Maduro, it seems not to make sense now. For there to be a transitional government, it seems that Maduro would have to be out of the scene.

Nadja Drost:

You have said that there's no possibility of co-governance with Maduro for a temporary period. Would you be willing to negotiate with him for him to leave office or accept elections?

Juan Guaido:

It's absolutely impossible to have a truly free election with someone who for years has kidnapped and killed, who prohibits humanitarian aid.

So it seems, at this moment, that it's not a path toward a free election, so that's not an option. [my emphasis]

The portions of that interview reported there do not include any description of how Guaidó and his handlers in Washington and Miami plan to transmute Venezuela from a petrostate to not-a-petrostate.

And, once again, professional ghoul Elliott Abrams is the special US envoy in charge of this regime change operation. He has a very well established and thoroughly documented record. The results of any regime change project he's directing will be seriously ugly. Everyone in the US and elsewhere who are backing this coup operation have good reason to know who and what they are supporting when they back an Elliott Abrams project.

And the Miami Herald report on the speech linked above also draws attention to the larger Latin American regime change agenda in the lede paragraph, "President Donald Trump declared 2019 as the 'twilight of socialism' in the western hemisphere Monday during a speech in Miami and cast impending regime change in Venezuela as a harbinger of things to come in Cuba and Nicaragua."

A Mike Pence Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine?

A Facebook friend posted a link to this New Statesman piece by George Eaton, The Stalin of the Caribbean: how Nicolás Maduro betrayed the Venezuelan revolution 02/06/2019:

During the 2013 presidential election he claimed that Chávez’s spirit visited him in the form of “a little bird”. On another occasion, Maduro compared himself to Stalin. “I am just like Stalin. The moustache is exactly the same,” he remarked in 2015.

The comparison extends beyond the merely aesthetic. Like Stalin, a party bureaucrat who assumed power after the pioneering Lenin, Maduro will be rembered [sic] not as the revolution’s saviour but as its gravedigger.

Part of the problem of mentioning war propaganda claims is that you wind up spreading them.

I'm going to make a wild guess here. I'm guessing that if Leon Trotsky, or Grigory Zinovyev, or Lev Kamenev had proclaimed themselves head of the government, had been recognized as such by the governments of the US and various European countries, made no secret about taking orders directly from Washington or London or Germany, and had declared themselves ready to accept foreign military intervention to install them as actual head of government in the USSR, they probably would not be giving public speeches and media interviews and driving around Moscow unmolested by the police two and a half weeks after they declared themselves Head Honcho. Which is the case today with Juan Guaidó in Venezuela.

Have I mentioned yet how this is one of the weirdest coup attempts I've ever heard of?

Not that it will make any difference to the characters involved in this effort speadheaded by future Great Statesman and Savior of the American Republic Mike Pence, professional warmonger and National Security Adviser John Bolton, and Iran-Contra criminal Elliott Abrams. But here's a slight bit of perspective on this particular bit of propaganda, from Jon Lee Anderson, Nicolás Maduro’s Accelerating Revolution New Yorker 12/11/2017, describing a public event:

Delcy Rodríguez, the [Constituent] assembly’s president, led a tour of an exhibition of photographs documenting the President’s life. There were photos showing him as a young union leader, with Chávez, with Fidel Castro; one showed him as a toddler wearing a mariachi’s sombrero. Rodríguez narrated as the group walked: “You’re a good man, Mr. President. Here you are with the Pope.” She came to a black-and-white image of a young Maduro, addressing a crowd with a handheld megaphone. “You’re a man of many facets, which have not been shown, because of the media lynching you’ve been subjected to, Mr. President,” she said. “But here, in the constituent assembly, we want to show you as you really are.”

When the tour was over, Maduro, smiling broadly, thanked Rodríguez, and joked about how he was usually portrayed as a villainous “tropical Stalin.” Turning to the audience, he said, “No one will take the good out of me. In all my humility, here I am.” [my emphasis]

Also of some interest from the same article:

... as José (Pepe) Mujica, a left-wing former President of Uruguay, told me, “What helps Maduro most is the nature of his opposition.” The opposition is divided into three major parties and several smaller ones, with little in common other than the desire to resist Maduro. After the elections in 2015, it appeared united by the mandate to recall him but then spent months bickering over the right way to do so. During the protests, as scores of young demonstrators were killed, it was unable to convert widespread outrage into a political program. “The Venezuelan opposition is truly the gang that cannot shoot straight,” an American official who has worked for decades in the region told me. “Over the years, they’ve had every opportunity to kick out Chávez and now Maduro, and they always fuck it up.”

Few people in Venezuela seem to believe that the opposition speaks for the poor, or for the country’s large mixed-race population. When I visited early in Chávez’s Presidency, business executives—who were universally white—referred to him unabashedly as “that ape.” With Maduro, the disdain is subtler, but only a little: they call him “that bus driver.” In response to Maduro, the opposition has tilted even farther to the right, reaching out to conservative allies, including the government of Mariano Rajoy, in Spain. Last February, Lilian Tintori, the wife of Leopoldo López, met with Donald and Melania Trump to talk about human rights in Venezuela. (When Tintori spoke of her husband’s imprisonment, Melania reportedly commiserated that the White House could feel similarly confining.) A photograph of Tintori posing with Trump circulated in Venezuela, where it was widely seen as evidence of crass opportunism.

Threat inflation is one of the worst plagues of American foreign policy. "Hitler", "Stalin" and "Munich" are three stock magic words in the incantation.

I wonder how long it will be before the Triad of War (Pence, Bolton, and Abrams) start calling Maduro "Hitler."

If we're going to have open US military action in Venezuela, we have to get there because we only even go to war against "Hitler". Ho Chi Minh was "Hitler", Saddam Hussein was "Hitler", etc.

To be fair to George Eaton's piece, this is a decent capsule description of recent history and one important to remember:

Between 1998 and 2012 GDP per capita more than tripled, and the country, long exploited by an entrenched oligarchy, achieved the lowest level of inequality in the region.

But its overdependence on oil – the “resource curse” that has haunted Venezuela – left it perilously exposed to a 40 per cent collapse in prices in 2014. ... The haphazard nationalisation of companies – with experienced managers removed – led to a sharp fall in investment and the rise of a new kleptocratic elite.

Venezuela is a petrostate, hugely dependent on world oil prices. It's reasonable to ask why the Chávez and Maduro regimes didn't do more to diversify the economy or invest more capital in development of the oil industry itself. Americans and Europeans have a bad habit of using "corruption" as a blanket description for the problems of any country poorer than their own. Which is partially true in Veneuela's case. But that belongs to the "curse" part of the blessing-curse of being a petrostate. That's true in good times as well as bad. And corruption doesn't stop the bonanza of high oil price years. For people who pay attention to such things, the Chávez government did have some success in promoting the construction industry and made a serious attempt to develop Venezuela's stagnant agriculture. But "keepin' 'em down on the farm" proved to be in insuperable challenge when urban opportunities generated by the oil industry were so attractice.

Does Guaidó's "government"-in-waiting have such plans? Will American TV pundits ask? (Yes, those are rhetorical questions!)

"Protecting" Latin America from Europe, Theodore Roosevelt style
(Wikimedia Commons)

I was just reminded recently that there was a (Teddy) Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine in 1905 after England, Germany, and Italy blockaded Venezuela in 1902. It basically said the US would block other powers from intervening but we would do it any time we wanted. From President Roosevelt's message of 1905 on the subject (Encyclopædia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite, 2014):

It must be understood that under no circumstances will the United States use the Monroe Doctrine as a cloak for territorial aggression. We desire peace with all the world, but perhaps most of all with the other peoples of the American continent. There are, of course, limits to the wrongs which any self-respecting nation can endure. It is always possible that wrong actions toward this nation or toward citizens of this nation in some state unable to keep order among its own people, unable to secure justice from outsiders, and unwilling to do justice to those outsiders who treat it well, may result in our having to take action to protect our rights; but such action will not be taken with a view to territorial aggression, and it will be taken at all only with extreme reluctance and when it has become evident that every other resource has been exhausted.

Moreover, we must make it evident that we do not intend to permit the Monroe Doctrine to be used by any nation on this continent as a shield to protect it from the consequences of its own misdeeds against foreign nations. If a republic to the south of us commits a tort against a foreign nation, such as an outrage against a citizen of that nation, then the Monroe Doctrine does not force us to interfere to prevent punishment of the tort, save to see that the punishment does not assume the form of territorial occupation in any shape.

The case is more difficult when it refers to a contractual obligation. Our own government has always refused to enforce such contractual obligations on behalf of its citizens by an appeal to arms. It is much to be wished that all foreign governments would take the same view. But they do not; and in consequence we are liable at any time to be brought face to face with disagreeable alternatives. On the one hand, this country would certainly decline to go to war to prevent a foreign government from collecting a just debt; on the other hand, it is very inadvisable to permit any foreign power to take possession, even temporarily, of the custom-houses of an American republic in order to enforce the payment of its obligations; for such temporary occupation might turn into a permanent occupation.

The only escape from these alternatives may at any time be that we must ourselves undertake to bring about some arrangement by which so much as possible of a just obligation shall be paid. It is far better that this country should put through such an arrangement, rather than allow any foreign country to undertake it. To do so insures the defaulting republic from having to pay debt of an improper character under duress, while it also insures honest creditors of the republic from being passed by in the interest of dishonest or grasping creditors. Moreover, for the United States to take such a position offers the only possible way of insuring us against a clash with some foreign power. The position is, therefore, in the interest of peace as well as in the interest of justice. It is of benefit to our people; it is of benefit to foreign peoples; and most of all it is really of benefit to the people of the country concerned. [my emphasis]

So I guess we don't need a Mike Pence Corollary to send in the troops to install Juan Guaidó. But with seriously bad actors like Pence, Bolton, and Abrams running the show, this will not end well. At this point, it's only a question of how much damage they will do.